another race, another story!

Last night was my first trail run, yes, last night. My running partner and another friend from church did the Moonlight Madness at Rancho San Rafael Park. I'd classify it as a mild trail run except that we did half of it in the dark and in painfully hard rain - these were quarter size drops that I swear started a mile up and gained speed the entire way down until slamming into me. Once in my exhausted, jumbled brain, I thought - what is making all that noise? It was the rain hitting my bib number, making the sound of hail on a tin roof! It wasn't rain that you'd willfully stand in that's for sure.

There weren't any mile markers on the course so it was difficult to gauge my speed but I was going hard. Near the end there was a very curvy paved section but the rain had soaked the path too much to run it with my slippery toe shoes so I took the thick grass next to it with the squirrel holes and a tree branch clean swept my sunglasses off the top of my head in the sprint. I slowed slightly for two steps and then thought....nah I'm not wasting 30 seconds on this issue, I have enough to worry about here. And why was I wearing sunglasses for a night run? Because the wind gusts before we started were throwing LARGE amounts of painful dirt in our eyes! That was right before lightning hit the hill above us and started it on fire. Luckily the smoke was blowing uphill! And poor Tim had the keys to the girls' car and he was huddled with screaming Calli under a tree, but he still cheered me on as I flew by!

After finishing there was no time to celebrate. I ran back up the hill to Tim and the kids, ran more uphill to look for my lost glasses (I saw a guy cheering and asked, "did you see some sunglasses around here?" He replied, "I can't see anything!"), found my glasses, and ran to the car with the keys to get us girls out of that insane rain! So the race was mainly Madness without any Moonlight. I finished a little ahead of my comrades, 32:01 and 11th in my age group out of 61 runners. For the training I put in and the course conditions I'm very happy with that time.

Now today I'm off to Tahoe, I'm in my second grass volleyball tournament on Sunday and that's where I'm really hoping to shine. I'll let you know how that goes!

before

after